That's what your name has been for the past fourteen years. You're pretty certain that's what it's going to be for many more to come. You wake up, you yawn a little, and you get ready for school. Every day.

Such is the opening post of Sayaka Quest, hosted on Sufficient Velocity and formerly on Space Battles. Can be found here, and here, here, here,here,here, here, and here, and here. Continued on Sufficient Velocity here.

You (and the other posters) are "the decision-making processes" that make up Sayaka's mind, and your goal is to save her from Urobutcher's sadism as long as you can. The hows and whys are descided by your consensus and build up from there. The results are not only nerve-racking at times, but also provides much in the way of warmth, laughs, and stupefied awe.

Tropes

Adult Fear: How would you feel if you found out that your only daughter, practically the only family you have left, is actually constantly risking her life and in danger of dying very horribly at the hands of super-powered beings you can't see, every single day? This is made worse once she reveals to you that a super Witch is coming in several days time, and is going to level the city you call home, with your daughter right in the center of it. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about any of it. You can only helplessly watch your daughter throw herself head-first into danger. Man, being Mikimom is suffering.

Armor Is Useless: Subverted: armor is the only thing keeping Sayaka alive for most of her early fights. Played straight by Elsa Maria's tentacles and some magical girl and witch attacks, which completely ignore all armor and defenses.

Taken to extremes by the Skadi fight, where Sayaka would have been dead at least four times without the damage reduction.

Break the Cutie: All over the place, which is no surprise given the setting. But a crowning example of this trope is when Sayaka watches Homrua's video-logs of her first few loops, literally watching the adorable, cheerful, hopeful little girl steadily become the stoic, ruthless, jaded, reclusive enigma she is now. And given how it's just one long string of Harsher in Hindsight, and how these were only the first few loops—Homura gave up on making them after the third loop—the knowledge that Homura has looped around 100 times just makes it all the more gutwrenching. Cue You Are Better Than You Think You Are to Homura.

Broken Masquerade: Sayaka's mother and Hitomi both find out about Witches and Magical girls. Her mother later finds out how one turns into the other.

Kyousuke finds out about magical girls after an attack on the school.

Cast Full of Gay: Even more so than canon. It's even said that upon becoming a magical girl, one must assume that you would become gayer than Liberace.

Chronic Hero Syndrome: Despite being much more practical in some ways than in canon, Sayaka will refuse to let magical girls witch out or get themselves killed when she can do something about it, even when it gets costly in grief seeds. She likewise rejected the idea of leaving Skadi alone after finding it, despite its terrifying power. And Barbara.

Dead All Along: Akane's friends, though no one was truly surprised by that. The way they died though...

Death Is Cheap: Oh goodness no, it is not. To quote the GM: If you make a stupid decision, that's it. If you are offed by the plot, that's it. If you witch out, that's it. Die rolls can be redone, and battle decisions can be redone, but only three times per enemy. Everything else is on your head.

"We should've told Hitomi that the Tokio Six don't do their homework." — Dalek Ix

Despair Event Horizon: Sayaka and Akane have both come close, and much of the cast is hovering just on the right side of this. The fight with the witch Skadi almost triggered one in Kyouko.

Kyouko witching out has already happened before in one of the bad ends, upon Sayaka's Heroic Sacrifice to throw Kyouko out of a black hole created by the dying Witch Celeste. She witches out right outside the barrier where Sayaka had fallen, and slaughters the bystanders around her, namely Hitomi and Sayaka's mother.

Destructive Savior: The fight against the last of the Tokyo Six causes a lot of collateral damage to Mitakihara's business district. But given what's coming, though...it might be rather redundant.

Dynamic Entry: One of Sayaka's specialties, most notably against Mitsuko.

Don't Say Such Stupid Things: Pulled by Sayaka on Akane. And by Kyouko to Sayaka. Heck, pretty much everyone to everyone else at some point.

Skadi. A witch that poses enough of a threat for Homura to intentionally avoid it in every single timeline after she found it...until Sayaka and Kyouko inadvertently blunder into it.

Dysfunction Junction: Notably less-so than canon, but more because everyone actually lives long enough to learn of the Awful Truth and cope with it afterwards. Kyouko is the most stable member of the main and arguably the supporting cast, at least after the early parts of the quest.

Sukuyo and Emiko have been saddled with "Christmas Tree" and "Pine Tree" due to their...interesting color schemes.

Tomo and Yoko, two newbie Magi, are referred to in both the setting and by the players collectively as "The Ducklings."

There are two Hitomi's now. To the readers, they are respectively "Classy Hitomi," for the canonical friend of Sayaka and Madoka, and "Non-Classy Hitomi," the barely present friend of the aforementioned Ducklings.

Heroic BSOD: Sayaka doesn't take any of the major revelations about the setting well at all. Neither do most of the other magical girls.

Idiot Ball: Several of the Tokyo Six have powers that could kill Sayaka and company easily; most notably, the leader has a 360 degree wind shield that's impervious to damage and enough Grief Seeds to attrition all the Mitakihara girls down, yet they all fall without using these techniques or deliberately underutilized them. Lampshaded by Homura, and justified because almost all of them are looking to be killed by a girl or group of girls strong enough to take their place. Also, given that most of them have...questionable sanity at best and have been comfortably snuffing out any threats to them in their infancy, it actually makes sense that they'd either get overconfident or uncreative.

Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens to much of the cast fairly regularly, given their role, and Sayaka more than the others, most notably against Elsa Maria and Emiko.

Let's Get Dangerous: The previously seemingly inept melee-only magical girl who was introduced about to get killed by a lone magical girl? Yeah, she just made the Tokyo Six run.

Light Is Not Good: One of the Tokyo Six makes an entrance in a flash of blinding light and looks like an armored angel.

Living Emotional Crutch: Very prevalent. It should also say something about the setting that this trope is a good thing, as otherwise most magical girls drift over the Despair Event Horizon sooner or later. Sayaka and Kyouko are definitely this to each other, and arguably it is the biggest reason why Sayaka doesn't fall into a grief-spiral of despair in this quest even after the worst reveals. It's also confirmed that Sayaka dying would cause Kyouko to witch out.

Luckily My Shield Will Protect Me: Sayaka's Greatshield gives a +40 to all defense rolls, when a normal roll is between 1 and 100. It still isn't always enough and has a huge corruption cost, but when combined with Sayaka's heavy armor and super-durability, it allows her to weather absurd punishment. Of course, against some enemies, even all of that can mean very little. A number of witches/hostile magical girls had attacks that completely ignored defenses/armor.

Major Injury Underreaction: Sayaka, to the point where she starts to mostly disregard major injuries in and after battle. Kyouko doesn't take it well.

Matchmaker Quest: Homura and Madoka, Kyousuke and Hitomi, Akane and Nakazawa...Doing this is one of S Bayaka's pasttimes.

Mercy Kill: What Sayaka sees killing Witches as, post-revelation. She considers doing this to Kyouko and Akane right after learning the truth, but only momentarily—she promptly feels appalled for even thinking that right afterwards.

My God Whathave I Done: The Tokyo immigrants don't react well to realizing they'd been farming civilians en-masse while under the effects of wish-induced emotional suppression.

One Steve Limit: Averted! There are two Hitomi's in the roster: Canon!Hitomi, and the non-magical girl one that's friends with Tomo and Yoko. See Fan Nickname above to see how the players differentiate them.

And attempted again with ice cream for Homura, with mixed results, and Tomo and Yoko much later.

Taking You with Me: The Solar System witch, Celeste, tries this on Sayaka and Kyouko. It worked the first time around, mainly due to the merely-sufficient number of voters awake/active at that time having No Sense Of Scale when it comes to just how insanely dangerous supernovas/black holes are.

The Unsmile: Kyubey, human teeth do not belong in a squirrel-cat's mouth.

Throwing Your Sword Always Works:Sayaka's ranged attacks fall under this. Well, most of the time she's actually shooting the swords—the hilts have a built-in firing mechanism, and the blades themselves are the projectiles. She can also make wildly differently-sized swords to use, so she can shoot anything from pins to tree-sized exploding blades.

What the Hell, Hero?: Akane doesn't hesitate to call Sayaka out on strong-arming her with an ultimatum at their first meeting to avoid a fight. Given that their next major interaction was Sayaka and Kyouko pulling a Big Damn Heroes to save Akane from certain death at the hands of the most insane member of the Tokyo Six, then healing her horrific injuries with no hesitation, though, Akane moves past this fairly quickly.

Whip Sword: An alternate mode for Sayaka's sword. She can also make it explode on command.

Who Would Be Stupid Enough: Who would be stupid enough to intentionally fight a triple Witch capable of curbstomping most magical girls, fellow Witches, and take a full third of Homura's arsenal to put down? Three guesses. Then subverted; not only do Kyouko and Sayaka manage to take it down with Homura's help, they manage to ultimately accumulate less corruption than they are able to siphon into the super-grief seed, and Homura hardly has to use much of her arsenal to help this time. This whole event serves as concrete proof to Homura that maybe they really do have a fighting chance against Walpurgisnacht this time, as taking down a super-witch was something she was barely capable of doing by herself in previous loops, while here it was exponentially easier when working alongside Sayaka and Kyouko.

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